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How Auburn football moved strength and conditioning work from the weight room to players’ homes

AUBURN — If you’re looking for ways to stay in shape during this coronavirus pandemic, Ryan Russell might be able to help.

Auburn’s strength and conditioning coach is spending most of his time at his actual home these days, rather than at his other home, the football team’s weight room. So he has had to adjust, too. He’s going for bike rides every morning and doing interval running every evening — run for 1 to 2 minutes, then walk for 1 to 2 minutes. He does that for about a half hour.

Want to intensify your push-up routine? Russell said change the tempo — control your descent to a 5-second count, then explode back to the top. Want to increase burn while doing lunges? Drop your knee toward the ground so your back shin is parallel to the ground and hold it for about 30 seconds. That, he said, will tear you up.

“Break a sweat every day,” Russell said on a Zoom teleconference with reporters on Tuesday. “Really, during this time, it's just about staying active and enjoying time with the family and all those sorts of things that can go a long way.”

Coming up with a plan for close to 100 college-aged football players is a little more difficult, though. Russell has spent the better part of the last eight years at Auburn working directly with players, in the weight room and on the field for conditioning drills. The team went through a four-week offseason program that started in January, then another three-week stretch that ended March 6.

But the Auburn University campus is effectively closed, with classes expected to remain online only until at least the end of June. The SEC has suspended all in-person athletic practices or meetings through the end of May. Tigers football players are at home, scattered throughout Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the rest of the southeast.

Luckily, Russell had a bit of a head start. On March 5, the football team held a meeting led by athletic trainer Robbie Stewart. He told players what he knew about COVID-19, where some of the hotspots were at that time and why they all needed to be careful. Russell responded to that meeting by putting together a three-day training program that players could do from home.

Eight days later, the SEC suspended all athletic activities and Auburn told players not to return to campus after spring break.

That initial program Russell handed out is still the basis of what players are doing now. Every Monday, he sends out two new workout regimens through the Teamwork athlete management app the team uses — one for players who do have access to weights or a gym (about 25-30%) and one for players who don’t.

The plan for players who don’t have free weights consists of a lot of body weight exercises, such as pushups and chin-ups — things that don’t require additional equipment. The @auburnstrength account on Instagram has also encouraged creativity from those players, showing them how they can use a backpack full of textbooks to create their own weight.

“Our foundational-level program, which is our ‘stage zero’ program, is built around mastering your own body weight,” Russell said. “So those movements are always in our program, whether it be inverted rows, different push-up variations — now, we do externally load them with weight vests and chains and things of that nature, but overall, those movements are always in our program in some capacity.”

Both plans emphasize speed work and conditioning. That’s the easiest thing to do at home, Russell said, “because they can all be outside and keep their social distancing.”

“That’s the No. 1 biomotor quality that they’re going to lose anyway, first, is that speed if they don’t continue to run fast and change directions and do all their plyometrics,” he continued. “And believe it or not, if they’re doing that stuff three days a week like we’ve prescribed, yeah they’re going to lose some strength levels, there’s no doubt, but they’re not going to be as bad off when they get back as they could’ve been had they not continued to sprint and not continued to do the jumping exercises that we prescribed for them.”

Perhaps the most difficult thing for Russell and his staff, from a strength and conditioning standpoint, is keeping players on top of their diets. Auburn has a great setup on campus, with a staff of dietitians, led by Lauren Silvio, that tells them what they should and should not be eating, as well as a Wellness Kitchen that caters to all their needs. Russell said they have been able to send care packages of supplements to players, but not all of them have access to the same food they would be eating if they were at school rather than at home.

Most of what that staff is able to do to help players right now is limited, too — not just by distance, but by rule. The SEC is allowing teams to hold four hours of virtual meetings with teams per week to watch film or install a playbook, but it is not allowing them to require or observe any workouts.

Fortunately for Auburn, the culture instilled on campus has created high character off it. Team leaders have started text chains to communicate with and motivate teammates. Players have come up with different ways to work out on their own.

“Quite a few times, because of the type of kids we have that train, we’ll get texts and calls and questions asked about the training sessions and what else they can do,” Russell said. “They want to get better. They’re looking for ways to get better, they’re looking for ways to do things with their specific situations. And that’s what’s been challenging too — or, actually not challenging, but kind of cool on my end — is helping these guys through their individual situations.”

That speaks to the other part of Russell’s job — not just the physical well-being of players, but their mental well-being, too. Football is such a big part of their identity. They spend most of the academic year training, practicing, eating, living and spending basically all of their time with teammates. Now, though, players are quarantined to their homes. They’re coming up on five consecutive weeks of being apart from each other and the game.

Russell is concerned about the workouts players might miss out on while they’re home, as well as how long it will take them to get back up to speed when they are allowed to return to campus. He said he might be working even harder now than he usually does, because of all the training regimens he has to deliver remotely, Zoom conferences he has to be on and calls he has to make.

But the physical will work itself out, even if it all has to be done outside the weight room for another two months or even three. These players wouldn’t be at Auburn if they weren’t capable of taking care of their own bodies. The guys who make an impact for the Tigers and at the next level are the ones “who are able to get their mind right and think right.”

In a time like this one, that’s maybe even more important than a strength and conditioning program.

“There has to be a fine balance,” Russell said. “If it's totally who you are, you're really struggling right now, right? It's a good time to think about when this game is all over, what are you going to do? How are they going to handle it? I think this is a good time, and I've been talking about that with them when I call to check up on them and just making sure because, hey, this game is going to end for everybody, right? So they have to have a plan in place, some other interests and understand their whole identity is not tied to this game.

“That’s what really separates the guys, the athletes that I’ve worked with through the years, is just the mental game, the state of their mind, how they’re able to approach things, how they’re able to deal with setbacks and things like that.”

Josh Vitale is the Auburn beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. You can follow him on Twitter at @JoshVitale. To reach him by email, click here.